Water pump pliers



May 6, 1952 A. B. PLAUTZ WATER PUMP PLIERS Filed June 14. .1948

ATTORNEY present invention, while similarly intended pri marily for uni-directional operation,"has the ad- 55' Patented May 6, 1952 UNITED STATES.

WATER PUMP PLIERS Arthur B. Plautz,White Rock, British Columbia, Canada Application June 14, 1948, Serial No. 32,921

6 Claims. 1

This invention relates to pliers of the type commonly known as water-pump pliers, a term which is of more or less general usage to designate a tool which is adjustable within a wide range of variable jaw openings and which has 5 its jaws offset from the handles and consequently acts much in the nature of a pipe wrench in that the bite of the gripping teeth is augmented as turning movement proceeds. In pliers of this nature there are, perforce, two jaws one of which may be considered as fixed and the other of which is adjustable, and the tool section which carries the fixed jaw is commonly provided with a shank placed angular to the jaw and also to the handle. This gives to the tool its peculiarizing offset appearance. In the usual construction of pliers of this nature, the angularly extending shank of the fixed jaw is straddled by a bifurcated shank which extends more or less as a rectilineal prolongation of the movable jaw, and 20 the lever fulcrum for the movable jaw generally comprises a pivot pin placed at the base of the jaw and which seats in a selected one of several notches cut into the front edge of the angu- I larly extending shank to occur at intervals of the length thereof. It is common practice, in pliers of the character here referred to, to establish leverage simply by the ratio between the short length of the inner jaw and the long length of the handle. This gives an elfective purchase 55 for operations which ordinary squeezing pressure of the hand, multiplied by this simple leverage ratio, will comfortably handle, but it frequently occurs that this purchase is insufiicient to hold the jaws in grip against the. force necesiif sarily exerted to free a rusted pipe or bolt showing unusual resistance to turning, and it is a principal object of the present invention to engineer a pliers which embodies a compounding of lever pressures to very appreciably augmentio the mechanical advantage and enable the jaws to exert a compression pressure far greater than can be attained with water-pump pliers heretofore available and which, in fact, will very closely N approach the gripping efiiciency attainable from 45 a conventional pipe wrench.

There is a further point to consider in respect of the ordinary water-pump pliers. To all practical purposes, the same must be turned only in one direction in order to establish and maintain '50 a purchase, this directional movement being, in fact, relied upon to hold the pivot pin in seated engagement within the selected notch. The

afiecting the tool. shank there is provided a series of equidistantly vantage of being also usable in the opposite direction where a somewhat lighter load is encountered and without, by so doing, dislodging the pivot pin from its notch.

With the foregoing and still additional objects and advantages in view, and which will appear and be understood in the course of the following description and claims, the invention consists in the novel construction and in the adaptation and combination of parts hereinafter described and claimed.

In the accompanying drawing:

Figure 1 is a fragmentary side elevational view illustrating a pliers constructed in atcordance with the now preferred embodiment of the present invention, the movable jaw and its associated handle being shown by broken and full lines in two positions of the permitted movement.

Figs. 2 and 3 are, likewise, fragmentary side elevational views showing the fine degree to which the jaws can be adjusted by selective placing of the pivot pin and the associated quadrant gear which is responsible for compounding the leverage; and

Fig. 4 is a vertical sectional view on line 4-4 of Fig. 2.

Referring to said drawing, the numeral 5 indicates the fixed jaw of the present pliers and which, as indicated, is made integral with a shank 6 extending angularly inwardly from the 'base of the gripping face, this shank being in turn integrated with a handle 1 which is shown as being located at an approximate 45 angle to the shank but which could feasibly be placed at any angle from 0 to 90 without adversely Along the front edge of this spaced notches 8, each more or less of semi-circular shape and having the intervening prominences formed more or less to the shape of forwardly pointing saw teeth, and namely with the back wall of each notch rising to a crest and sloping rearwardly therefrom to the front wall of the next following notch. The back edge of the shank is similarly dentated but the teeth thereby produced, and which I designate l9, are

given a cog shape and produc that which in effect is a rack. The spacing between the cogs is in correspondence with the spacing of the front-edge notches and preferably such as places the cogs of the rack in staggered relation to the prominences'of the notches or, otherwise stated,

substantially opposite the sulci of the-notches.

The "other o'r mo'vable' jaw of the pliers, de-

noted II, has an integral bifurcated shank l2, and the furcate arms thereby provided straddle the shank 6 of the fixed jaw 5. A circular pin I3 of a diameter adapting the same to a closefitting engagement within the front-edge notches 8 is peened or otherwise rigidly secured to the shank of the movable jaw to traverse the crotch of the latter, and there is also carried by the other or free ends of the furcate arms a pin [4 which serves as a pivot mounting for a member l5 formed much to the shape of a bellcrank, and which provides a short lever arm l6 and a long power or loading arm H, the latter serving as the functioning complement of the fixed handle I. The mounting of the bellcrank is such as to place the fulcrum at the outside, and which is to say distal to the fixed handle. Upon the free end of the lever arm there is provided a quadrant gear composed, by preference, of three teeth 20, 2| and 22 arranged to mesh with the teeth ll! of the rack, the teeth being of a bulbous shape fitting quite closely to the contour of the mating sulci.

In using the pliers, and when it is desired to freely shift the movable jaw in relation to the fixed jaw, it is only necessary that the power handle I! be swung rearwardly into the dottedline position of Fig. l which operates to disengage the quadrant gear from the rack, and the movable jaw may be then lifted to elevate the pivot pin l3 above the surface limit of the notches. Assuming that it is desired to grip an object, the movable jaw is then slipped forwardly until the toothed face is brought against the object and the pin I3 is then dropped into the nearest notch. First canting the movable jaw in the manner shown by full lines in Fig. l, the power handle is brought inwardly toward the fixed handle to initiate a meshing engagement of the quadrant gear with the rack, and the two handles are thereupon squeezed to effectuate a rolling action of the quadrant gear and bring the latter into either the position shown in Fig. 2 or the position shown in Fig. 3, and which will depend upon whether the gear-mesh has been initiated in one or the other of two adjacent sulci of the rack. Fig. 2, for example, indicates the initiating tooth of the three-tooth quadrant gear as having been lodged in the fourth of the series of eight rack sulci, whereas Fig. 3 shows such tooth as having been lodged in the fourth sulcus. The ability to selectively initiate the gear mesh in either of two rack sulci, for each of the several notches in which the pivot pin may be lodged, assures to the tool an ability to maintain the gripping faces of the jaws very nearly in parallelism and still permit the jaw spread to be adjusted to an unusually fine degree, and while at the same time allowing the use of a pivot pin, whose diameter is perforce determined by the size of the notches, having a size sufficient to preclude shearing under force of extreme lever pressures. It is at point to here mention that a wrist-mounted block so formed as to simultaneously lodge in, say, two of the notches could be employed if desired in lieu of the illustrated pin. A structure of this nature which, however,

was utilized in a tool lacking the compounding of' leverage which peculiarizes the present pliers is illustrated and described in U. S. Pat. No. 62,250. It is thought that the invention will have been bodiment. It is self-evident that minor changes may be resorted to without departing from the spirit of the invention and I therefore intend that the hereto annexed claims be given a scope fully commensurate with the broadest interpretation which the employed language fairly admits.

What I claim is:

l. A pliers of the character described comprising a pair of coacting and relatively movable jawed members one of which provides a shank made integral with and placed angular to the related jaw and the other of which provides a shank likewise made integral with its jaw and arranged to extend cross-wise to the first-named shank, means for establishing a selected single fixed fulcrum for the second-named shank from a plurality of permitted fixed pivotal fulcrums spaced at predetermined intervals within the length of said first-named shank, a handle integrated with the first-named shank and extending from the end thereof opposite the jaw, and a complementing handle arranged to take a purchase from the longitudinal edge of the firstnamed shank opposite from the related jaw and pivoted to the free end of the second-named shank so as to act in concert with the latter said shank and exert upon the related jaw a force of compounded leverage for swinging the latter about its established fulcrum directively toward the first-named jaw when the two handles are squeezed together.

2. A pliers of the character described comprising a pair of coacting jawed members, one of said members providing an integral shank placed angular to the related jaw and uniformly notched along both the front and the rear edges to form series of rounded sinuses, the other said member providing a bifurcated shank made integral with and extending as a rectilineal prolongation of its jaw and arranged to straddle the notched shank, a pivot pin traversing the crotch of said bifurcated shank and adapted to be fulcrumed in a selected one of the front-edge sinuses, a handle integrated with the notched shank and extending from the end thereof opposite the jaw, and a lever pivoted between its ends to the free end of the bifurcated shank, one end of said lever serving as a handle complementary to the first-named handle and the other end being formed with a quadrant gear arranged to mesh selected groupings of the rear-edge notches.

3. A pliers of the character described comprising a pair of coacting jawed members, one of said members providing a shank integrated with and placed angular to the related jaw and which is formed along both the front and the rear edges with a series of teeth, the other said memberproviding a bifurcated shank integrated with and extending as a rectilineal prolongation of its jaw and arranged to straddle the first-named shank, means carried by the bifurcated shank to occupy a position in the crotch of the latter and adapted to find pivotal engagement with the toothed front edge of the first-named shank at selected points within the length thereof, a handle integrated with the toothed shank and extending from the end thereof opposite the jaw, and a lever pivoted between its ends to the free end of the bifurcated shank, one end of said lever serving as a handle complementary to the first-named handle and the other end being formed with a quadrant gear arranged to mesh selected groupings of the rearedge teeth.

4. Structure according to claim 2 in which the .prominences which occur between the front-edge notches of the first-named shank, profile considered, are suggestive of. saw-teeth in that the back wall of each notch rises perpendicularly to the crest of the adjoining prominence and the prominence slopes rearwardly therefrom to meet the front wall of the next following notch, the functioning advantage being that the pivot pin rides freely over the sloping rise of said edging faces in the preliminary process of localizing the fulcrum of the pivot pin by shifting the two jaws directly toward one another upon an object to be gripped.

5. The pliers of claim 3 in which the lever is produced in the form of a bell-crank with the fulcrum located at the side opposite the firstnamed handle.

6. The pliers of claim 1 wherein the said firstnamed shank presents teeth along the edge thereof opposite from the related jaw and the said complementing handle presents a toothed quadrant arranged to be brought into mesh with the said teeth of the shank.

ARTHUR B. PLAUTZ.

REFERENCES CITED The following references are of record in the file of this patent:

UNITED STATES PATENTS Number Name Date 338,326 Wilson Mar. 23, 1886 416,500 Robbins Dec. 3, 1889 627,401 Edwards June 20, 1899 708,210 Dahl Sept. 2, 1902 1,145,067 Kelly July 6, 1915 1,540,464 Edwards June 2, 1925 1,753,224 Wagner Apr. 8, 1930 2,063,439 Johnson et al Dec. 8, 1936 

